I cannot imagine why on Earth the president thinks it is a good idea to sit down for an interview with Bill O’Reilly during the pre-game for the Super Bowl. Unless he plans on making O’Reilly look like a total idiot, I don’t see the upside.
Greg Sargent seems to be worried about William Daley becoming Obama’s chief of staff for the wrong reason. The election moved the administration to the center because they now have to deal with a Republican House. Compared to the new arithmetic, the criticism that Obama has governed too far to the left is of infinitesimal importance. We’re playing defense now, and the goal is to win re-election, not to win some stupid argument about the Overton Window. The reason to worry about Daley is not that he’s friendly with business, but that he lacks the killer instinct needed for a presidential campaign.
Things are bad in Israel. It appears that there is now a form of McCarthyism developing there. But I think it’s worse than McCarthyism.
I think someone should give Atrios a book deal and an Iowa road atlas so he can cover the Little Rickey Santorum for President 2012 Excellent Adventure. Of course, I’m willing to do the gig. Send me an email, a case of grapefruit, and a small stipend and I’ll be on my way.
David Rivera will be the first freshman to resign, but he won’t be the last.
What’s on your mind?
The Gore campaign, or at least Gore himself, thinks highly of Daley’s killer instinct.
Haha!! He would have won by being even more wishy washy than he was? Look at the other campaigns Daley was involved in? Biden’s debacle in 1988 .. and John Kerry’s in 2004 .. Daley is as much a Democrat as Evan Bayh
Apparently, Daley wanted Gore to concede without forcing a recount. He’ll fit right in with Team Obama. He was Rahm’s mentor, after all.
With “pro’s” like Daley and Bob Shrum, the mystery isn’t why the Dems lose so much– it’s how they win at all on the national stage.
Really? I just read a post by Howard Fineman that he told Gore NOT to concede because he was told there were questions surrounding the results. Maybe you’re talking about towards the end of the whole disaster.
In any case, Daley is Chief of Staff, not the person in charge of Obama’s reelection campaign. He will have his input but Obama, AS ALWAYS, has the final say. Just like it was with Rahm on HCR, Obama kept going when many around him including Rahm were saying he should give up. When people start to acknowledge that Obama can think for himself and that he really is smarter than his critics, then maybe just maybe the left can stop kvetching every time he hires someone.
O’Reilly is not going to eat Obama so stop worrying. He’s done it before and it didn’t ruin him. besides, Obama is used to talking with idiots and people who have little to no respect for him – see press conferences/press corp
I expect ten GOP seats to go out with the presidential year election tide. The usual shit; indictments, playing grab ass with the help, lousy fund raisers, lousy campaigners, bad fits for the district.
It will be largely a GOP map but then so is the current one. It’s gonna be hard to protect a 25 seat majority sitting on 50+ Obama districts. Control of the House will come down to 15 or so real races.
Seems to me that it is as simple as the Super Bowl is a big national event and it is one of the places where the President can reach the America that doesn’t really pay attention to politics. It is on Fox this year so that means a Fox personality interviewing him.
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A source at Yisrael Beiteinu said yesterday that “the party will insist that Kirshenbaum head the committee and not Danon.”
Is Yisrael Beiteinu the party of Russian immigrants Bill Clinton spoke about? Rapists get jail time … not if your name is Moshe Katsav and you are a former president of the democratic Jewish state.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
because he still believes he can reason with the unreasonable. He got the tea party morons elected with his backbone and leadership deficits. Read some FDR:
“I welcome their hatred”. Compare and contrast to Obama’s obeisance.
He doesn’t begin to measure up to the job he’s been given.
A case of grapefruit and a machete.
You also need a really large car (aka “land yacht”), and pump the tires up to 100psi for your trip to Iowa.
I figure you’d be halfway to Pittsburgh when the drugs kick in. Bring your attorney. And watch out for the giant bats.
HST is gone, but his legacy lives on…
yes, I will need a machete. Good to see that someone got the reference.
Also cleats….
I have mixed feelings about Obama doing an interview with O’Reilly. On the one hand, it gives O’Reilly a degree of legitimacy I do not believe he deserves. On the other hand, it emphasizes a point that goes back to Bush vs Kerry; conservative Republicans are typically only interested in being interviewed by those who they know in advance will be sympathetic. At least some Democrats are willing to have a dialog with the opposition, and are able to hold their own while doing so.
The problem is O’Reilly is already seen by a large segment of the population as legitimate. And certainly other newscritters aren’t going to call him out on his bullshit. The White House tried taking on Fox and found themselves getting ambushed by the rest of the news media. So Obama might as well throw Fox a bone every once in a while. It doesn’t cost him anything.
Now that Obama has appointed Bill Daley as the US Ambassador to the International Bankers and Corporation lobbyists…
he still has to appoint someone to administer the Executive Office of the President, the primary stated duty of the chief of staff. Or is that what Valerie Jarrett has been doing?
Boo you say: The election moved the administration to the center because they now have to deal with a Republican House.
where were they before they moved to the center? certainly not on the left? I am having a hard time detecting anything they did from the left.
I don’t know what you consider to be the left.
In the last Congress, nothing could pass that did not have the blessing of Ben Nelson and at least one Republican. The only exception was from mid-September 2009 to early January 2010. In that period, we only needed Nelson’s blessing. So, anything that was to the left of Nelson couldn’t pass. You expected the president to give us far left legislation under those circumstances?
Now we can’t pass anything that doesn’t have the blessing of at least 25 Republican congressmen and 7 Republican senators. You expect to see even center-left legislation?
As I have often said. It doesn’t matter what Obama says, it matters what he can pass. It’s about math.
Booman, Your point is well taken.
On the other hand, the Administration could have changed the Senate environment.
Perhaps filibuster reform should have happened sooner ?
Perhaps Obama/Reid should have played hardball with folks like Nelson & Lieberman and said “If you do not vote our way you will lose committee assignments”.
It only takes one “example”, to make other folks fall in line.
I always thought Hilary Clinton could have spent the next 20 years being a “hammer” of a majority leader.
On the other hand, the Administration could have changed the Senate environment.
How? Dissolve the body and call for new elections? The Senate, whatever the nominal party affiliation of its majority, is a whole separate critter, with institutional imperatives of its own that run sometimes parallel with, sometimes orthogonal to, those of the White House.
It’s a rare senator that needs a president to win re-election. They’re mostly independent barons with their own funding and campaign apparat.
Not really. Filibuster reform would have had to have been done on the first day of the 111th Congress, two weeks before Obama was sworn in. And once it wasn’t, it wasn’t.
As for threatening Ben Nelson’s committee chairs, he doesn’t even have any, and he’d be only too happy to caucus with the GOP, as that would make it easier for him to win reelection anyway.
Lieberman gave us the 60th vote we needed on several issues, including health care reform. We did take away his seat on the Environment Committee. He doesn’t give a shit what Obama or Reid wants, and he too could caucus with the GOP if we push him too hard.
No, there really wasn’t a whole lot the president could do beyond persuasion and promises to help with reelection to change the dynamic. He wasn’t ever going to get a public option out of the Finance Committee so he cut a deal. Doesn’t mean he wanted it that way.
“Things are bad in Israel. It appears that there is now a form of McCarthyism developing there. But I think it’s worse than McCarthyism.“
Are you just noticing that?